Contactless payment is a convenient and secure method for consumers to make payment transactions for goods and services. Such payment transactions are becoming increasingly common. Currently in the UK, there is a spending cap when using contactless to make payments, primarily for security reasons such as to prevent fraudulent usage. The spending cap limit was recently increased to £30 from £20 and future further increases are likely.
Contactless payments can be made using a variety of contactless payment devices. Typically, debit or credit cards issued by banks or building societies come equipped with contactless payment chips (integrated circuits) to facilitate contactless payments. Other means of making contactless payments are also becoming increasingly common such contactless payment devices like key fobs, smartcards, smart watches, mobile phones and tablet computers. Mobile phones and tablets must have the correct hardware and software such that they can be configured to make contactless payments. Contactless payment devices include wireless transceivers.
In a typical merchant transaction, for example at a restaurant, a customer receives a bill at the end of a meal and submits a form of payment. Tips and gratuities are often incorporated into the main bill at the customer's discretion and paid in cash or with a payment card. Certain retailers have payment terminals which allow the customer to add tips and gratuities to the main bill when making a card payment. Typically, when making a payment, a payment terminal is presented to the customer comprising a keypad to allow the user to enter desired tip and gratuities and to confirm the payment transaction. When the desired amount has been confirmed, the customer can then proceed to make a payment using a PIN number entered into the keypad for authentication. Some payment terminals however do not offer such a feature and tips and gratuities must then be paid separately, which is usually possible only using cash.
Furthermore, outside of the retail environment, for instance when interacting with charitable organisations, donors are often presented with a number of means to donate money. Typically, charitable organisations accept donations in cash, debit or credit card donations over the phone, text donations, internet donations or contactless donations as well. For contactless donations, donors may be given the option to donate a preset amount of, for instance, £3, £5 or £10. For charity personnel collecting donations on behalf of charity organisations in public areas, often, a donor is only presented with the option to pay by cash only.
WO2012/154902 and US2007/046655 disclose parking meters with user interfaces by which a user can set a price to pay using up and down inputs. The possible payment amounts in these devices are limited to a small number of options. For some other reasons also they are not well-suited to service tipping and charity donation applications.